Ballinakill ball wall build has started and fencing around pitch five on the way

The long-awaited ball wall in Ballinakill has been started. That was the news brought to the club delegates at the county board meeting in Bray last week by Martin Fitzgerald.

“The ball wall has been started,” he said, “and there will be 3G going around the wall and the next project in the next month or two will be a fence around pitch five,” he added.

Fitzgerald said that there are other things being planned for the Centre of Excellence but that those were the things being completed in the immediate future.

AGB’s John Murphy asked if there were any developments planned for the pitches in Ballinakill. He said that games seemed to be called off regularly at the venue due to bad weather.

“Is there an astro pitch going to be put in?”

Martin Fitzgerald said that there is a plan to install a new astro pitch in the next 18 months to two years, but he also disagreed that games were called off regularly.

“If you talked to Owen Doyle, he’d tell you that most pitches in Ballinakill get used every day,” said Fitzgerald.

Damien Byrne said that you could count on one hand the amount of times games or training had to be called off in Ballinakill. Byrne paid compliments to Owen Doyle for the hard work he puts in to maintain the pitches on a voluntary basis.

Eddie Leonard wondered if the county board could invest in some cable ties to fix the nets at the goals.

“We do be up there regularly refereeing schools matches and the nets are deplorable. They’re hanging off, they’re not secured. It’s the Centre of Excellence. It looks very poor for visiting teams from Wexford or Carlow,” he said.

Damien Byrne told Eddie Leonard that they would look into it.